I’ve created a PR for this feature and hope to see it included in future releases. The change is quite minimal, and it greatly improves my workflow in MP. Background below.
My primary use for ArduPilot and Mission Planner is GPS lawnmowing, and I make heavy use of the spiral survey path tool. When planning a new mission, I typically drive the perimeter of the desired area in manual or steering mode, triggering waypoint saves along the way using the RC transmitter. When complete, I download the saved waypoints and then use a script that I wrote to translate those points to a polygon that I can load into Mission Planner. This feature negates the use of the scripts and extraneous external file saves. @ktrussell uses a very similar workflow, and we have collaborated quite a bit on the scripting tools, all the while commenting, “If only Mission Planner would do this?!” Well, hopefully it does now
I started to reply to your post about the Polygon Feature with this, but it might get the purpose of the post side-tracked, so I didn’t:
This would be very useful. Mission Planner is “friendlier” in manipulating waypoints than polygons, I feel. A small example is that while placing waypoints on the screen, one can see in the upper left corner how far and what angle the mouse pointer is from the previous waypoint placed. In polygon mode, these values still show how far the mouse pointer is from the previous waypoint, not the previous polygon point.
EDIT: Hmmm, I guess I DID reply to it! LOL. Oh well. I’ll leave it.
I made an additional pull request to enable the user to reverse some or all laps of a spiral “grid” pattern, starting with the perimeter. Optionally, there is a selection to “fix” the first leg of the pattern so that it exactly matches the input polygon.
This video demonstrates the added features and gives some rationale for their inclusion. Feedback has been 100% positive thus far.
